if youve the room to do it, head straight for home depot!
buy the following:
1- 8'x4' sheet of tile bord, this is a sheet of masonite with a flat white on one side. price= 8 bucks
1- 8'x4' piece of plywood, price will depend on the thickness, we use a 1 or 1 1/4 inch thick piece, 20-30 bucks
2-3 rolls of CLEAR contact paper, 6-8 bucks
2-3 three sharpies, 5 bucks (you could use drafting or artist markers that come in different values of grey or any color instead of black)
If you didnt have any of these supplies, you'd be around 50 dollars for the big table, but if can find some good partical board or other way to hold up the tile board your at around 25 bucks. Say an average group has 6 people in it, thats only 4-8 dollars a person! less than a movie ticket! unless that movie is the The Two Towers then that ticket is priceless! anyhow...
So, using your plywood your making a table top, you can make legs for this table, use saw horses, set it on an existing table, or whatever. This is your base.
Get a straight edge, yard stick or whatever works, and use the markers to put down a 1 inch grid on the white side of the tile board.
then apply the CLEAR contact paper, this is like plastic lamenent, just make sure you smooth it out as you go avoiding any air bubbles and that the strips, that are about a foot wide, dont have any gaps between them.
Now you've got a 8ft x 4ft gaming table that you can use with dry erase markers! *remember dry erase markers will remove permenent marker, hence the need for the contact paper*
if your cramped for space, just get the tile board, have Home Depot cut it in two 4x4 pieces (costs 50 cents or $1) and youve got a piece big enough for the dinning room table! its very light and could hide behind a book case or hutch. Plus it be right around the 20 dollar mark. Not bad.
Right now we have a big 8x4 table and we are going to make the table into 2 layers with 2x6s to create a space for books and stuff.
We have a dedicated room for our game so we are very spoiled. We're about to paint the walls with a map of Faerun! cool anyway.
ps-maybe invest in a bottle of ispropel alcohol to remove stubborn marker.
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